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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26617663">Above us, the stars glow cold</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/luciditylost/pseuds/luciditylost'>luciditylost</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Space, Found Family, Gen, excuse me sir this is my comfort sleepy bois plus friends au, heck yeah sbi, now also featuring niki and minx!, though for now they are all very lonely</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 05:54:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,864</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26617663</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/luciditylost/pseuds/luciditylost</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Each of them floats through space, alone.</p><p>Wilbur has to leave his home.</p><p>Niki has to find hers.</p><p>Techno lives to gain control of his ship.</p><p>Tubbo and Tommy live to be allowed off of theirs.</p><p>Phil searches for a planet that can support life.</p><p>Minx searches for a way off of one.</p><p>Each of them floats through space, alone, but if they can find each other they may reach their goals.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>not here no thank you</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>137</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Look to the sky</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>	There is a place on the ship that only Wilbur Soot knows about.</p><p>	At this point, that should be impossible. His ship is far from <em>small</em>, but there are always just a few too many people on it, and every single one of them is seeking distraction in any way that they can find it.</p><p>	However, Wilbur is the only person willing to crawl through the vents.</p><p>	It breaks every important rule on the ship, and he knows them better than nearly anyone else here. There was a time when he would have been able to stand tall and recite them, in order, listing each exception as it became relevant.</p><p>	There was a time where he hoped that maybe, just maybe, he could belong here.</p><p>	That time is a distant memory now, and Wilbur sits in a room that nobody is supposed to be able to enter. It’s not meant to be aesthetically pleasing, not like the garden that’s always busy near the center of the ship. Instead, it’s overgrown, filled with rows of plants that would take far too much effort to contain. Wilbur doesn’t know why they are kept here, whether they’re meant to be food or abandoned decorations, but somehow they’re still getting water, and they have climbed over the old pathways and support beams.</p><p>	Wilbur is careful with them, even though nobody else would know if he wasn’t. In return, they let him sit among them, his overgrown thoughts blending in with the scenery.</p><p>	One night, when he is supposed to be asleep, Wilbur sits among the plants and thinks about how he has never seen space.</p><p>	It surrounds him, he knows. He doesn’t doubt that he was told the truth about where he lives (a spaceship, one of the biggest that is still moving and one that it is an honor to be raised on). He grew up learning to adjust his movements to the different gravities on different areas of it, and that doesn’t seem like something that he would need to do on a planet. He knows why his ship only has windows in the cockpit: the hull needs to be powerful to protect from the debris that is scattered across the universe, and windows are delicate things not made for vacuums.</p><p>	Still, Wilbur misses the stars.</p><p>	When he was younger he would ask his parents if it was possible to miss something that you had never seen. They had just smiled at him.</p><p>	He longs to look at the world outside of the ship more than anything else. He knows that the stars are beautiful, in the way that he knows that his heart is beating. When he was younger, he had applied for the intensive training to become captain just to see them, but nobody ever even considered him for the program, and eventually he gave up.</p><p>	If he could only see the stars, Wilbur thinks, then he would <em>sing</em>.</p><p>	The plants, which are almost enough to fill up the emptiness all around him, seem to agree.</p><p>///</p><p>	Phil is offered passage on yet another ship that passes by him in the night.</p><p>	To him, it is always night. <em>Day</em> is a concept made for places where he can watch the sun rise over the horizon. It has nothing to do with sleep schedules, and nothing in common with the pattern that he finds himself in now.</p><p>	<em>See a star in the distance. Move closer to it, enter its gravity as much as is safe. Watch it grow brighter in the window until it hurts to stare at, until the curtains have to be closed. Look at the planets around it, searching for one that might offer you something special.</em></p><p>
  <em>	Find nothing.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>	Leave, watching the light fade as quickly as it had once approached. On to the next system.</em>
</p><p>	Phil has spent years in the same routine, with nobody else on his individual probe to distract him from the way that afterimages of stars dance behind his eyes. He sleeps alone in a small cabin with two beds, and he navigates by his instinct because he was never taught to read the electronic charts that would tell him where to go. There’s nowhere that he needs to be, even if he did know how to read them. It’s lonely, but not nearly as lonely as the space that surrounds him, so he makes do.</p><p>	He knows that he could escape from this life if he really wanted to. Once every month or so, a larger ship will offer him the honor of being allowed to board and join their crew, trading his work for people to talk to when it gets late and he feels hopeless.</p><p>	Phil only had to fall for that lie once. He learns quickly.</p><p>	Hidden in a small room in the center of his ship are the things that people really care about. Phil has a farm to provide for himself, which is rare but not unheard of for a ship as small as his, but in the center of the farm are some of the most important exports from Earth to exist, and he has full control over them.</p><p>	Neatly labelled by scientific name are thousands of seeds, held in airtight packages in order to last as long as possible. When Phil left Earth, he took the most important part of it with him, and the green stripe on the outside of his ship shows the world just how precious his cargo is. It’s a recognizable marking no matter how much distance he travels.</p><p>	Phil tends to his garden and survives, alone, for as long as he can. At this rate, he will be able to float through space for his whole life.</p><p>	There is nothing left for him to do but stare out of his windows, looking for a planet that glitters blue and brown.</p><p>///</p><p>	Niki stares at her small craft in the hanger of the ship that she still, against all odds, lives on.</p><p>	It’s been a year, or maybe a little longer. When she boarded, the captain asked if they could take her ship and repurpose it as a landing craft for their missions.</p><p>	Niki had refused. When they asked her again six months later, she still refused.</p><p>	She knows what happens once she gets into a routine on a new ship. At first, everything is bright and shining and she makes friends who are drawn in by her smile. But then, as soon as everyone else becomes comfortable enough around her to forget about her, Niki realizes that there is something <em>wrong</em> about where she is living.</p><p>	There is always something wrong. Niki knows that she’s probably being too picky. The wrongness is never obvious, never something that she can point out to others.</p><p>	But wherever she goes, it is not <em>home</em>.</p><p>	Niki stands alone in the hanger of the latest ship that she has come to understand she does not enjoy living on. The hanger is very large, and her ship is very small. She is smaller.</p><p>	There is nobody else around. When she had boarded this craft, the captain had proudly called it a city. It does not feel like one now. Niki likes the feeling of a city, with all of its bright lights and infinite crowds, but she will be fine without it. She has gotten used to what it means to live her life alone.</p><p>
  <em>Nothing here feels like home.</em>
</p><p>	Even on this massive ship, with a central hub that is always busy, Niki lives her life alone. She has never been able to survive any other way. Her friends always notice, eventually, once they stop being distracted by her newness and her smile.</p><p>	It has been months since she has seen the stars. Niki longs to return to them.</p><p>	She hates that she misses the stars far more than she has ever missed a person, but she accepts the truth in her feelings.</p><p>	It is time for her to go.</p><p>	No matter how many times she realizes that it’s time to leave yet another spaceship, it never hurts any less. Now, for the first time in a year, Niki’s world crumbles around her. The ceiling is collapsing, and the stars are too far away to touch.</p><p>	<em>At age 15, Niki is given a ship by her parents. They tell her that they are sorry that they raised her to be a wanderer, they tell her to leave them and make her own way. She listens.</em></p><p>	Niki sits down on the ground in front of her craft. She will board it as soon as she has gathered her things.</p><p>	Alone in the hangar, with the wide doors that open into space closed securely in front of her, Niki takes a notepad out of her pocket and begins to make lists. She lists food that she will need, and clothing that she should buy before she goes.</p><p>	As the last list, she writes down the name of everyone on the ship who she will want to say goodbye to.</p><p>	It is complete too quickly. It is not a long list.</p><p>///</p><p>	Minx kicks the ruined landing gear in front of her and scrawls another large X on the tree that she uses as a calendar.</p><p>	It’s been 326 days since her life ended and a new one began.</p><p>	That’s almost a year. She considers planning some sort of anniversary celebration, but instead she mutters a stream of curses as she makes her way back to her hut.</p><p>	She didn’t expect to survive this long stranded on a planet in the far reaches of her galaxy, with only her own thoughts and the noise in the trees around her for comfort. To reach the one year mark would be a victory.</p><p>	To reach the one year mark would be awful. Minx fucking <em>hates</em> it here.</p><p>	It’s too loud at night and too quiet during the day. There are edible plants, but she had to figure out for <em>herself</em> which ones they were, which took more trial and error than she would care to admit. She lives in a shack that she built, but she’s an awful builder, and the rain always comes in during storms.</p><p>	Worst of all, she’s technically on a scientific mission right now, which means that she has to keep a log of everything she does. Minx has never had an assignment more excruciating.</p><p>	Talking to nobody drives her insane. It would be better to talk to herself, because then there would be no limitations on swearing. It would be better to stay quiet, because then she wouldn’t have to pretend that anybody was ever coming to retrieve her, smiling with her log clutched tightly in her hand.</p><p>	Minx never smiles, not anymore. Even when she records her logs, and she calls her mission a “success”, she does not smile.</p><p>	She remembers when she did. She remembers when it would have been a miracle to find the planet that she is now stranded on.</p><p>	It <em>is</em> a miracle, isn’t it? Minx looks around her, taking in the land that she has managed to live on for almost a year. Even after this long, the plants still look eerie, tall and curved around each other and covered in neon buds. The sky, though, is the same blue as the one that Minx grew up with, and though the sunrises are not as brilliant, they are made of the same colors.</p><p>	If looked at during the day, the planet could almost be Earth.</p><p>	The stars give it away. Minx cannot bear to look outside at night anymore. The sky transforms and becomes a thing as unfamiliar as the dirt beneath her feet.</p><p>	The planet is not Earth.</p><p>	It is the impossible. It is life that was not born of the same sun that Minx was.</p><p>	It is so far from Earth that there is no certain map leading to it, and Minx’s ship crashed onto it 326 days ago exactly. Her signalling device is still broken. At this point, it would be as much of a miracle for Minx to fix it as it was for Minx to find herself on the sort of planet that she had spent years looking for.</p><p>	It seems selfish, for Minx to ask for more than one miracle.</p><p>	Instead, she screams and slams her fist into a tree.</p><p>///</p><p>	Techno stands in the central hub of a ship that is not yet his to command.</p><p>	There should be people flowing around him, talking far too loudly as they make their way to wherever it is that they need to be. Instead, Techno is alone in the room. There is nobody talking with their friends or realizing that they went the wrong way and turning around, a shocked look on their face. There is nobody sitting on a bench, waiting to meet someone. There is nobody to see that <em>Technoblade</em> is standing close to them and shift their gaze to the floor, straightening their back and dropping their voice to a whisper.</p><p>	Techno relishes it. He looks around him and memorizes the feeling of a moment that only he is a part of, one that is so intoxicatingly <em>his</em> that it makes him dizzy.</p><p>	He wants it to last forever.</p><p>	It will not. Soon, another person will come running through one of the large doors that lead to this place, and Techno will have to start moving and pretend that he did not feel any joy in his loneliness.</p><p>	<em>Is this what the stars feel like?</em></p><p>	Techno smiles and begins to move, replacing the silence around him with the clicking of his boots. He walks in a precise rhythm, four quick steps and then a pause, which echoes throughout the room.</p><p>	Only a short walk away, Techno knows, is the cockpit, where the captain of the ship probably still sits in his chair and watches the stars as they pass.</p><p>	Techno has only seen the stars three times, each during a training exercise where he was not allowed to be in the cockpit alone. He hated hearing his classmates chatter with each other in front of the wide window, saying useless things about the scoring of this assignment or trying to describe the way that space felt to them.</p><p>	Techno has never liked talking. But he did like the feeling of the stars around him.</p><p>	He would do <em>anything</em> to stand by himself in that cockpit, with the vastness of space as his only company.</p><p>	He tries to carry the knowledge that he is surrounded by beautiful things far greater than himself into this moment. In the hub, alone, he lays down across an entire bench because there is nobody around to challenge him.</p><p>	Here, in this space, there is only him.</p><p>	Techno liked the feeling of seeing the universe as it truly is.</p><p>	He thinks that he may like this feeling almost as much.</p><p>	It is the opposite, but it occupies the same place in his thoughts.</p><p>	<em>Power and weakness. A short moment and an infinite one.</em></p><p>
  <em>	Above all else, an emptiness that conquers everything around it. It conquers even him.</em>
</p><p>	Techno observes each of his emotions from every angle, until he is satisfied with the result. He stands up from the bench and lets the sound of his breathing scatter to the corners of the room.</p><p>	He leaves the hub before his moment has the chance to.</p><p>///</p><p>	Tubbo wakes up before Tommy does, as usual. He gets out of his bunk as quietly as possible to check their small ship for failures that would need to be repaired.</p><p>	There are none. Everything is running smoothly. Tubbo smiles.</p><p>	He begins to count the food packets, placing them into small piles as he works.</p><p>	Tommy tells him that there is no need to count their rations each morning. They have a schedule, and both of them are very good at following it. They both fear what will happen if they don’t, even more than they fear the stars outside of their window.</p><p>	Tubbo counts despite this. Lost hours of sleep are far, far less important to him than his need to <em>know</em> that everything is going exactly according to plan.</p><p>	A year ago, it had seemed like there was infinite food.</p><p>	Now, there is only enough to last the two of them a few more months.</p><p>	This is the one thing that Tommy is not willing to mention. Each day, the two of them will spend hours talking. Tommy will make jokes and throw things at the wall and tell stories that he learned on Earth and laugh and laugh and <em>laugh</em>.</p><p>	If Tubbo tries to bring up the food, Tommy will stop laughing.</p><p>	“Soon,” he’ll Tubbo, smiling too widely for it to be the truth. “Soon a big ship will come pick us up, Tubbo, and then you’ll feel so <em>stupid</em> for worrying about it!”</p><p>	“Yeah, I probably will.” Tubbo never presses the issue.</p><p>	Instead, he counts the food every morning, and eats only half of what is marked down on the rations list.</p><p>	He knows that Tommy does the same thing late at night. Sometimes, when he wakes up after a nightmare, he’ll find his friend surrounded by freeze-dried noodles and vegetables. This is a part of the larger food issue, which means that Tubbo is not supposed to mention it in the morning.</p><p>	Tubbo has just returned the bags to their shelves when Tommy comes in, rubbing his eyes. Tubbo frantically opens up a map of the galaxy on the cockpit interface and pretends to look at it.</p><p>	“Good morning!” Tubbo waves, but continues to look at the map. It is <em>very</em> interesting to him, far more interesting than counting packets of food could ever be, and he needs to convince Tommy of this.</p><p>	“Tubbo. Why are you looking so far away from where we are? How fast do you think we go?”</p><p>	“Um.”</p><p>	Tommy laughs. “Yep, I <em>knew</em> it. Come on, let’s get breakfast.”</p><p>	They split one ration.</p><p>	Neither of them mentions it.</p><p>	Outside, there are far too many stars. They stretch for an infinity in each direction, each one so large up close that Tubbo struggles to comprehend it.</p><p>	Surely, at least <em>one</em> of them must be blocked out by a ship that is closer to them than the star is. Tommy and Tubbo have sent out an emergency signal, a constant cry for help, since they first decided to travel together three years ago.</p><p>	So far, nobody has come running.</p><p>	What could the universe possibly gain by accepting two sixteen-year-olds raised on Earth?</p><p>	After breakfast, Tommy and Tubbo argue about which path to take for the best chance of rescue. It is an argument that used to leave them both sobbing in separate rooms. It lost all meaning long ago.</p><p>	Instead, after the argument, they lean against each other in their small cockpit. Tubbo puts his head on Tommy’s shoulder.</p><p>	“Clingy,” Tommy mutters, and pretends to shake it off.</p><p>	Tubbo smiles when Tommy reaches for his hand.</p><p>	<em>It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.</em></p><p>
  <em>	We have so much time.</em>
</p><p>	Together, the two of them watch for a distant star to be blotted out.</p><p>	Together, they pretend that they have found what they were looking for and return to their sleeping room, where there is no window. Tommy makes up stories about his childhood for the rest of the night, and Tubbo laughs at every joke, even the ones that don’t land.</p><p>	Tubbo tells Tommy about the stars. Instead of talking about how they look outside of the ship, he explains the science of them and the way that they were charted. He keeps talking about them with a critical eye until they become nothing more than distant objects. Tommy groans and asks him to stop, but Tubbo ignores him, and Tommy keeps listening.</p><p>	They eat one more time before bed. They hug before Tubbo goes to sleep, clinging to each other tightly.</p><p>	Tommy slips out of their sleeping room and counts the food.</p><p>	Tubbo dreams of stars, growing so close that they threaten to burn him.</p><p>	Their ship travels on.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. There is hope here (if you can find it)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wilbur hasn’t been able to sleep in a few days. He knows that his friends worry about him, and Rihanna in particular likes to threaten to stay up for as long as he does, but Wilbur is far too good at smiling and laughing and making sure that everyone has forgotten about him by the time that they go to bed.</p>
<p>
  <em> (He tries to be happy about it when they do.) </em>
</p>
<p>He doesn’t try to explain to them that he hates the daytime, with its bright fluorescent lights and the crowds that never seem to go away. Maybe they would understand, but he isn’t sure, and so he stays silent.</p>
<p>He isn’t even sure if <em> he </em> understands.</p>
<p>All he knows is that, when the space around him is finally empty, Wilbur’s life almost feels like his own again. All he knows is, when he is by himself, Wilbur feels something that he would not give up for the rest of the world.</p>
<p>When he compares his lonely footfalls to his dreams, which are always full of endless corridors and silent eyes, the choice is easy.</p>
<p>So Wilbur stays up, and he drinks too much coffee. He thinks about singing and about the stars. He does not tell anyone about his growing fascination with rhymes.</p>
<p>Life keeps moving. He has a job monitoring the engines of the ship, one that is necessary but not difficult to train people for. It’s boring, but his coworkers tell good jokes and he is proud when he can make them laugh at his own. He spends his meals and evenings with the Soots, which is something that he always enjoys in the moment. Sometimes, the group of them come up with an idea that they think is so funny that they pour all of their free time into writing a skit about it, and then Wilbur’s late nights suddenly feel much more useful and much less lonely.</p>
<p>Still, though, something seems missing.</p>
<p>He stares across the table at Charlie one morning, who is halfway through telling an animated story about some adventure that Wilbur is too tired to keep track of. Everyone else seems interested. Everyone else seems to be making something of themselves, here, at least enough that they’re able to sleep at night.</p>
<p>
  <em> (He tries to be happy about that, too.) </em>
</p>
<p>Wilbur adjusts to the gravity of those around him, laughing whenever they do, and tries to put everything else out of his mind.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>///</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Niki is more tired than she should be. She sleeps as often as she can, but that is nowhere near enough for her to wake up well-rested. Instead, she takes naps whenever she can, and when she stays up for 40 hours in a row she calls it necessary.</p>
<p>Maybe it is. She doesn’t know, at this point. She runs her small ship alone and in exactly the way that she wants to, and if there is a better way she doubts that she will ever learn it.</p>
<p>Still, Niki feels like she should not be perpetually exhausted in the way that she is. When she lived on a ship with others, she got used to the engines running themselves and the food always being plentiful, but it still feels <em> wrong </em> to Niki for the life of a wanderer to be so difficult for her.</p>
<p>She misses the way that she was able to sleep in for a year, after all, but she does not miss much else, and Niki knows by now that she does not get to pick and choose which parts of life on a large ship to keep.</p>
<p>Niki has hundreds of contacts that she could call at the press of a button. Maybe they would not all answer her, but she could at least try to reach out to them. </p>
<p>She does not.</p>
<p>Instead, she looks out of the same window that she looked out of when she turned 16, the one that she knows the curve of by heart. She lets her own loneliness build inside of her until it becomes a constant.</p>
<p>Niki enjoys her life flying through nothingness more than she has ever enjoyed her time in a place filled with other lives. At least she knows how to be lonely in this way. It is an emptiness that mirrors the world around her, one that feels infinite instead of suffocating.</p>
<p>She runs from her past, the ships that she has spent almost a year on and the moons that she has tried to live on for only weeks before leaving again, and she hopes to never see any of them again. None of them were right for her. None of them were her home.</p>
<p>
  <em> (This small ship is not her home, either, but at least it provides the hope of one. Niki holds that hope close to her like it is the only thing that can save her, because maybe it is.) </em>
</p>
<p>She lets the memory of what she is around other people colour her life as she tends to her small farm and makes notes on her maps. She does not sleep for far too long, and it is a blessing in the same way that the bright gravity of a star is.</p>
<p>Niki measures the distance between the planets and defines herself by them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>///</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This is what a dream that cannot be followed feels like:</p>
<p>Wilbur, staring at the metal beams of the ceiling far above him, the crowds around him moving past without a second glance.</p>
<p>If it were closer, Wilbur thinks, then he could feel less small.</p>
<p>If it didn’t exist at all, then he would be able to touch greatness.</p>
<p>He sighs and continues on his way. Nobody in this room but him knows his name, and he thinks that maybe it didn’t have to be that way.</p>
<p>
  <em> (Wilbur, ten years younger, stars in his eyes and held in his hands, and seven friends who would travel between worlds for him. Wilbur, ten years younger, with what every adult around him called “exceptional leadership skills” and “intense focus”, convinced that there was a place for him at the head of his ship.) </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> (Wilbur, who had never been wrong before.) </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> (Wilbur, who was about to get used to being wrong.) </em>
</p>
<p>With stars still behind his eyes, Wilbur cannot find a new dream to make his own-- at least, not while the rooms around him are so large and so impossible to leave.</p>
<p>He finds his room in a hallway with hundreds of identical rooms. When he opens the door, the rest of the Soots are already inside, laughing with each other.</p>
<p>Wilbur slips into the conversation where a place has been left for him.</p>
<p>He’s late again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>///</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This is what a dream that has never existed feels like:</p>
<p>Niki, telling stories to herself in three different languages because she is the only person that she knows how to speak to, pacing more quickly whenever she encounters a word that she no longer remembers.</p>
<p>If she remembered more, she thinks, then she would be able to make sense of her own life.</p>
<p>If she remembered nothing at all, then she would be able to move beyond it.</p>
<p>She records the amount of water that she has left and changes into a new outfit whenever she feels like it. There’s no sense of time on the ship, and nobody to watch her, but she has always enjoyed the idea of clothing.</p>
<p>
  <em> (Niki, four years younger, headstrong and in love with life itself, standing next to her parents at the helm of a ship that they shared. Niki, four years younger, keeping track of food for the entire family and living off of the stories that her mother would tell about a place where anyone can feel safe and valued.) </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> (Niki, who had always felt older than her years.) </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> (Niki, who was about to see a smaller ship that those around her called a “gift” and feel far, far too young.) </em>
</p>
<p>She is still in love with the <em> idea </em> of life itself, she thinks, but her parents taught her a language that nobody else she has met speaks and nobody but herself knows how to define her by anything more than love.</p>
<p>When she remembers to sleep, she sees images of a warm place where she has never been, shining so brightly that they fill the spaces between her lives. She catches a glimpse of something unconditional.</p>
<p>Niki makes lists of things that she thinks might exist in a home.</p>
<p>She’s dreaming again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>///</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When he realises what he needs to do, Wilbur is alone at night.</p>
<p>About a week ago, he got tired of sitting in the same place and contemplating life, so he began to explore his entire ship. He had hoped that it would make him feel more comfortable during the daytime.</p>
<p>Instead, he finds two things: a guitar and a hangar.</p>
<p>The guitar is hanging in the display window of a small music shop that Wilbur discovers hidden at the end of a hallway full of stores. It is unlocked, still open, and full of signs that cover the grey walls in splashes of colour. Wilbur is the only customer. The owner of the shop shows him how to hold it and play a few simple chords.</p>
<p>Wilbur has never felt anything so natural. While the guitar is in his hands, he cannot stop smiling.</p>
<p>As soon as he leaves the shop, his smile fades. Wilbur listens to the echoes of footsteps around him and pretends that they are a melody.</p>
<p>He finds the hanger while he is looking for the edges of the ship, wanting to know the exact limitations to his dreams.</p>
<p>There are more ships in it than Wilbur expected. To him, the concept of <em> flying out of his home </em> had always seemed impossible for everyone but scientists and the most elite members of society. Everyone else was necessary in a very different way, one that kept their feet firmly on the same ground for their entire life.</p>
<p>Resting before him, though, are entire rows of identical carriers, each meant for three people or less. Wilbur cannot imagine how they are all used.</p>
<p>
  <em> (It is not until he sees them that Wilbur remembers that he knows how to fly a ship. He learned long ago, as part of his training to potentially be captain, and he has never quite forgotten how it feels to be in control of something so much more powerful than him.) </em>
</p>
<p>When he realises what he needs to do, Wilbur no longer has any reason to stay.</p>
<p>He spends three nights preparing, stockpiling food and spending all of his free time in flight simulators. He asks strangers about hangar bays, and finds that their interior doors can usually be opened by any pilot during flight. When his friends ask what he is doing, Wilbur simply laughs.</p>
<p>He laughs often, now. Rihanna smiles and says that she’s glad for it.</p>
<p>There was a time when Wilbur had people who would follow him for as long as they were able.</p>
<p>Now, Wilbur knows, they will not.</p>
<p>Now, there are things that Wilbur must do alone.</p>
<p>A key to one of the ships is easy to take. Nobody untrustworthy is supposed to know that they exist, after all, so there was no need for them to be hidden. Once Wilbur learns what to look for, he sees opportunities everywhere, and he has to hold back laughter as he takes one from a particularly inviting keychain.</p>
<p>He does not say goodbye to any of the Soots. Instead, he leaves them each notes, hidden in places that he knows they will not find until they go looking. He tries to explain everything. He hopes that, once they read them, they will understand.</p>
<p>He writes <em> I love you </em> seven times exactly.</p>
<p>Before he leaves the place that he no longer thinks of as his home, Wilbur buys the guitar.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>///</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When Niki realises that she still has something to hope for, she is flying her ship directly into a place that no maps have charted.</p>
<p>She couldn’t say why she does it. It’s almost an instinct, the need to seek things out. One moment, Niki is looking for a protected settlement on the edge of a planet that she has heard about, one that nobody should be living on but that people are trying to, and the next, she sees a blank area on the map and sets course for it. She expects to find nothing worth exploring and return to her life quickly, with nothing to show for her bravery but slightly less food.</p>
<p>Instead, she finds a mystery.</p>
<p>Niki is trying to sleep when her ship alerts her to an incoming signal.</p>
<p>Although she makes no effort to hide from communications networks, Niki hasn’t received any signals for years. Her ship is unmarked and small, offering nothing to larger settlements, and she rarely sends out a message herself. To the rest of the universe, she is the perfect wanderer, someone with no resources and even less desire to make a place for herself standing still.</p>
<p>When she gets a signal where <em> absolutely nobody else should be </em>, then, she doesn’t know what to make of it.</p>
<p>It is weak, so weak that Niki cannot find any meaning in the message that it is trying to send. Either it came from very far away or from badly damaged equipment.</p>
<p>The only thing that she knows with certainty is that it is broadcasting on a wide range, from even farther into wild space, and that the broadcast is made in a language that sounds familiar.</p>
<p>Beyond that, there is not much more that Niki can decipher. She stays up all night listening to the signal, trying to understand it or to strengthen it, and by the time that she collapses on the table her notes are filled with more questions than answers.</p>
<p>For the first time in years, Niki dreams of a future that she can see in front of her.</p>
<p>When she wakes up, she makes three cups of coffee and leaves the message playing on repeat while she goes to the window.</p>
<p>Outside, she can see a planet shining red and orange. It has too many moons for her to count.</p>
<p>She is maybe the first person to ever see it, and the thought makes her smile. She stares at it until it vanishes into the distance.</p>
<p>For the rest of the day, Niki plays the signal throughout her ship, waiting for it to get stronger.</p>
<p>As she follows a path that seems made for her into the unknown, Niki sketches planets covered in vines and glittering with life. She makes for herself a world that she can call her own.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>///</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After three days, Wilbur has grown sick of wandering. He records audio logs every two hours and sets them on repeat until it’s time to record the next one, just so that he can hear someone talk.</p>
<p>"I just want to <em>see someone again,</em>" he yells into more than one of them. He never plays those ones back to himself.</p>
<p>He practices chords until his fingers give up on him and then he practices more. He tries to figure out how to grow food in microgravity and without any experience. He didn’t prepare enough rations, after all, and he didn’t think to set a destination for himself.</p>
<p>He can see the stars, though, and every morning when he wakes up he watches them until his eyes burn.</p>
<p>He can see the stars, and he can chart his own course, so he sets aside the growing loneliness and pores over maps until he has memorised the name of every planet that is near him.</p>
<p>
  <em> (The first time that he actually sees one of them, almost entirely blue and ringed by wide bands of rock, Wilbur nearly cries. He writes his first song that day, never letting the glow of this new world framed by a star leave his sight.) </em>
</p>
<p>When he starts talking to himself without the help of audio logs or music, Wilbur realises that he might go crazy here.</p>
<p>When he looks out of the window in his cockpit and points to a destination on his map at random, Wilbur thinks that maybe he wouldn’t mind.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>OH MY GOD it has been over three months. i am, frankly, quite embarrassed. in my defence, i had College and also was suffering trying to figure out how wilbur got off of the ship??? however i am so, so sorry. the next chapter should come far more quickly, and it will focus on phil and minx if all goes to plan!!!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Time is the first thing to stop mattering</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Even though he never lives for anyone but himself, Phil still likes to keep a schedule.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>To those who were raised in space, Phil knows, days mean nothing. They are a mark of when to call a meal ‘breakfast’ and when to call it ‘dinner’, a way to know whether to set an alarm for six hours of sleep or eight.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not for Phil.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can still remember the sunrise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe that’s why he wakes up at what his clock calls 7 A.M. every day, even when he has nothing to do (which is always). Maybe it’s a force of habit at this point. Maybe he likes to pretend that he still has some mission to keep records for.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Whatever the reason, Phil never lets himself sleep in. Even on weekends, he wakes up at the same time, and immediately marks the new date in his log. After that, he makes himself whatever breakfast he can find and pretends that it tastes any different than what he ate the day before. He writes the recipe in his log, too, just in case he wants to use it again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He never does. It usually takes a few minutes of thinking for him to come up with new foods to try, and following a recipe takes no focus at all. Sometimes the most interesting thing that Phil is able to do all day is finding an interesting way of combining three of the same vegetables that he’s been living on for over a decade.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After that, Phil’s schedule is open for the rest of the day.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he left Earth, he was given instructions to take care of the plants daily, and take inventory of the seeds once a week. Now, he spends most of his day sitting among the plants, checking their water and light sources once an hour. He takes inventory daily, even though he has it almost memorised by now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil has never hated keeping schedules. He has always accepted the necessity of building a life off of a list of things so small that he has to work to notice them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(There aren’t any more small things left for him to notice.)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil never goes to bed early. There are days when he wants to, when he wishes that he could do anything other than stare at the metal walls or the darkness around him. There are days when he wakes up still remembering blue skies, and all that he wants to do is find them again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That wouldn’t work. There is nothing waiting for him in his sleep but a lost past and an unlikely future. He knows that by now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil goes to bed at the same time every night. Before he sleeps, he always checks the date, just so that he does not completely lose track of the outside world.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His clock is still set to GMT. Back before he learned to keep to himself, he used to tell that to anyone who was willing to talk with him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>None of them ever knew what it meant.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span> ///</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Minx loves sleeping.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’s sick of pretending that she doesn’t, really. For months, she would wake up every day and mutter something to herself about how lucky she was to be alive, how brilliant it was that she had accomplished her goals when it seemed impossible.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Those were lies, of course.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(She had always known that.)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So this becomes her daily routine: she sleeps in until she cannot possibly sleep for any longer. She kicks her transmitter, or messes around with it until she feels like she has done something. She eats, maybe one time or maybe five. She yells at the sky.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then she scratches another mark into her tree, watches the sunset, and goes to bed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a terrible schedule, really, as much as it is a schedule at all. Minx hates it, but that’s fine. She hates many things more.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The only thing that she does not hate is sleeping.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So she does it as much as she can, and when she wakes up, she retells her dreams in enough ways that she will be able to remember them until she can go to bed again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s a real shame,” she tells herself one day, “that nobody would believe me if they got my signals. They’d probably just think that it’s some insane lonely bitch. Real fuckin’ shame.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn’t know exactly why anyone would think to call her a liar, but she’s heard as many stories as everyone else.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(It drives you insane, being lost in space with no goals and nobody to talk to. Makes you think that you’re doing things that you’re not. Humanity would go a long, long way to see the colour green again.)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her transmitter is beginning to make strange noises. Minx doesn’t care, not really. It was always the job of </span>
  <em>
    <span>other people</span>
  </em>
  <span> to play the technician on their mission, to make sure that everything was running smoothly, and there is nothing that any of them can do for her now. The most that she can do for herself is to ignore it and watch which foods the animals eat. Maybe, if she does that for long enough, she’ll find something that tastes slightly better than what she currently has.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minx watches the sunset every night, even if she does not want to. She stares at the trees around her, towering and almost familiar to her by now. The sky is something that she thinks she remembers from her youth, but tilted slightly. The colours are brighter, or maybe duller, and Minx is not sure which. The sense of déjà vu threatens to overwhelm her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Still, it is beautiful.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She hates to admit it, but it is beautiful.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The sunset is beautiful, even if the day presses in on her and the night has too many stars, and Minx always finds herself drawn to it. Sometimes she even almost smiles.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She lives her days by the sunset, now. She wakes up whenever she feels like it, but she always goes to bed when the sun does. It is a habit, the only one that she has, and she grounds herself with it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Time is waking up. Time is the sunset. Sometimes the days seem longer or shorter, but Minx does not know if that is her imagination.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All of her clocks broke long ago.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>///</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>This is what a dream that has been abandoned feels like:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil, looking out of the window and marking down the appearance of a planet that nobody else has paid attention to before, only to find that it holds no potential at all. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If his mission succeeds, Phil will be a hero to what is left of Earth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If there is nowhere else at all, there will always be a reason for him to keep searching.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He takes care of his plants and stares out of the window. There is almost certainly something out there, but Phil doesn’t know what he would do if he found it. On his most selfish days, he thinks that it might be better to keep it to himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(When he first volunteered for this mission, Phil had refused to even call the plants his own. He swore oaths to be true to science and to his goals, and he hugged his parents goodbye, and he would not lay claim to anything that was part of his new life.)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(Phil, who had too many ideals and not enough patience.)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(Phil, who was about to learn just how wide the space is between planets.)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something within him still holds the hope that everyone was right, that he is guaranteed to succeed if he searches hard enough and treats the life of his ship like his own. This was his destiny, his goal, his promise: he is going to be everything that it implies, and more.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then another ship calls him in the night, wanting his plants and nothing more, and he remembers that there was always another side to humanity.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He does not accept any offers. This is his one rule to himself, something that he holds in higher regard than even any of his goals.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s alone again.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>///</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>This is what a dream that is a lie feels like:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minx, trying to fix her hut so that she can wake up to something other than a maze of puddles every time that it storms, marking down the leaf shape of every tree that she can find and making up her own categories to tell the species apart.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If she is ever found, Minx will give all of her information to another scientist and try to never think about it again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If her calls for help lead to nothing at all, her diary will contain more secrets than maybe anyone else in the universe.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She tries to grow fruits in new soil and screams at the sky. She swears as much as she wants to, because in every situation that she currently faces, swearing is exactly as helpful as watching her mouth. Besides, it’s something to say. On her worst days, Minx does not talk at all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(When she first saw what a planet looked like from space, Minx gasped and pressed her face to the window of her ship. Her crewmates laughed at her, but all that she cared about was the way that a new world was spread out before her. That night, she talked for fifteen minutes into her log, describing every detail she remembered of a planet that had already been studied by other, more experienced teams.)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(Minx, who always wanted to see everything.)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(Minx, who was about to see something that nobody had ever seen before and hate every second that she spent looking at it.)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There are many corners on this planet that she has not yet explored. Minx knows that she should, and she wants to. Really, she wants to be anywhere but where she currently is. She wonders if the planet that she is stranded on has oceans, and if the beaches are made of sand or rock or something that she is not able to identify. She wonders if there is a mountain that she could climb and watch the sunrise from the top of.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She wonders if, somewhere on the other edge of the world, there is a way to make this place her home.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her transmitter is in front of her, completely broken. Minx has no way to fix it, and even if she did, she has no clue where any tools are.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minx sighs and sits down next to it. She stares up at the sky and watches for the glint of metal against the sun.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’s hoping again.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>///</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Another ship is trying to get his attention.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil rarely bothers to pick up their calls anymore, but today he is feeling especially lonely. So he does, and he listens as the person who he has connected with tells him all about the opportunities that await him on a larger ship.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I take the deal,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he almost says. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Take it all-- all my plants, all my knowledge, all my projects-- and give me a room to sleep in that is crammed with other people. Never let me set my own course again, if I get to talk to them.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t say any of that, of course. He’s not sure if he’s too responsible or not responsible enough.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So,” the person who is talking to him says. She is a woman with a cold voice, smooth enough that Phil has to guess at exactly where her lies begin and end. “It’s a wonderful deal, as I’m sure that you know. We could give you work in the farms, if you want, or as a mechanic-- we have a lot of space open, and I’m sure that you have a wide skill set. No rent is required, other than work. What do you say?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It is almost an instinct, at this point, to ignore her words.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He still has nightmares about the last time that he tried to integrate into the culture of a ship. He almost lost his own vessel, and even worse, his plants. The captain wanted to use them to start a new section of his own farm.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By now, Phil has learned all too well that Earth’s word carries no weight outside of its atmosphere. The plants are </span>
  <em>
    <span>his,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and their goal is his goal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” he says, “but I’m doing fine on my own. I have goals that I’m trying to reach. Thank you for the offer, but I don’t need your help.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She begins to speak more, about loneliness and psychology and recommended courses of action. In the end, Phil has to be the one to cut the connection.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time that he does so, he is almost angry, hearing this woman talk about loneliness like it is the worst thing that anyone could ever experience. He can tell, by the tone of her voice, that she has never even truly known it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She was probably born on the same ship that she now works on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil thinks that he should probably envy her, but he does not have the strength to do so.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Each one of his plants is in its place, that day. He hums under his breath as he counts them, because at the very least, he talked to another person.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>///</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Day 331,” Minx says. The timer on her scientific log has long since ceased to function, but somehow, it still records, saves, and plays back her messages-- if you can navigate it interface without the help of a display, of course. Minx is pretty sure that the device could survive the end of the world.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(Maybe it already did.)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>God, she wants to stop doing this already. Because she is still technically a professional, and because she trained for years to be allowed to do what she is currently doing, she feels like it is what she has to do. If she could, though, she would give it up even more easily than she gave up setting alarms in the morning.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s really fu-- really bad here,” she says. “As usual, I guess. I found a new bird, though? Or at least I think it’s a new bird. It might just be a male variant of those small ones that feed on flowers and only come out at night-- it shows most of the same behavioral patterns.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minx hates naming things. They all feel false on her tongue, like she’s being </span>
  <em>
    <span>rewarded</span>
  </em>
  <span> for doing something as simple as looking around. The only species on the whole planet that she gave a name was one of the creatures that looks suspiciously like a snake, which bit her on her second day here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the Fuckface Snake, even though it barely has a face and probably isn’t technically a snake. Minx couldn't care less. She avoids Fuckface Snakes at all costs and never talks about them in her logs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She talks a bit about edible plants and then ends her log.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When she first arrived here, Minx would play each one back the next day and try to commit the information in it to memory. She gave up on that long ago.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She never says anything that matters in them, anyways.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The only time that Minx says things that matter is when she is staring at the sunset. Sometimes, then, she whispers everything that she still remembers about Earth.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>///</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Somewhere outside of Phil’s window there is deep space. He knows because he is headed directly towards it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He cannot see it yet. He knows that he cannot see it yet, because it is all that he looks for whenever he moves to his window. Planets are beautiful, but when they’ve been studied before, he forgets what they look like quickly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For years, every single moon that he passed was recorded on his maps, with paragraphs of information about the elemental composition of it. Now, most moons are ignored, and some planets have no more information about them than their name.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Someday, Phil knows, he will be able to add a planet to the maps. He already knows what he is going to name the first one that he sees.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The day that he is truly waiting for, though, is the one where he reaches the edge of the map entirely. After that, he will be on his own-- probably for the rest of his life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The planet that he is currently passing is bright orange. It has a lot of moons and is named after the system that it is in. Its elemental makeup has not been tested.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s lovely.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil watches it closely, taking note of each of the bands in its colouration. He does not write down anything about it, even though he is still close enough to Earth that his logs may still be returning to them. Nobody was clear about the exact limit of their communications with him, other than that he would be truly alone by the time that he reached deep space.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil wants to keep this planet to himself. He doesn’t quite know why. All he knows is that he likes the way that orange looks against the void of space, and he dreamed about being an architect instead of a scientist the night before.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re a good one,” he says to it, “but not for me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His ship carries him away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil moves away from the window and waters his plants.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>///</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The knowledge that she will </span>
  <em>
    <span>survive this</span>
  </em>
  <span> did not come quickly to Minx. Instead, it was one small part of a revelation at a time, in quiet moments when she was collecting water or watching the ruins of her ship or finding a new tree to make marks on and yell at.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One day, she wakes up with a knowledge of what to do to make it through the day, and that is when she finishes realising that she is still alive, and likely will be for the foreseeable future. That is when Minx starts to think of herself as a </span>
  <em>
    <span>survivor</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The knowledge that she will, more likely than not, be able to live here for a full year is not like this. There is nothing to remember. It comes to her all at once, as she is making the mark for day 335.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’ll be able to make her one-year mark on the same tree that she is currently swearing at. She’ll probably be able to do it on the same line that she just made a scratch in.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That shuts her up quickly. Suddenly, swearing feels wrong.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Even talking feels wrong, so Minx does not talk for the next two days. She watches the way that vines hang down from the trees above her, and they seem greener to her than they have ever been before.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She can only hold one thought in her mind: in less than a month, she will have lived here for one year.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She does not tell this to her logs. She does not know how many entries she has made, but she decides that she will not make any more until it has been a year. It feels right to spend the next month with only her own thoughts for company.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(One year. That’s close enough to a lifetime for it to give Minx pause.)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She tries to observe the world around her, the things that look like insects and the things that she cannot even begin to categorise, for a whole month.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It doesn’t work. After only a week, she finds a tree and starts trying to carve an entire phrase into it:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>MINX WAS HERE, ASSHOLES! SHE HATED EVERY SECOND.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>While she’s working, Minx can almost forget to pay attention to the sky. She tells herself that it’s just something above her, that it carries no special significance beyond the fact that its atmosphere is the sort that humans can breathe in.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She always goes to bed before it is night. It helps her ignore the universe above her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minx is still busy carving her legacy into somewhere that nobody else will ever see, so that she does not have to consider the meaning of </span>
  <em>
    <span>one year,</span>
  </em>
  <span> when she hears a strange noise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If she didn’t know better, she would almost say that it sounds like engines.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minx looks up. The glare of metal nearly blinds her.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>///</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Phil does not know what to expect when he sees the other ship in the distance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It is smaller than his, even, an escape probe or something similar. It is not meant for long flights, he knows, but it looks to be headed on the same course as him-- directly into uncharted territory, the sort of place that is only entered by the very desperate and the very naive.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil does not know which one he is, but he can make a guess about the ship that is getting closer to him every day.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It is being run on autopilot, by someone who probably does not know enough about maps to correctly program autopilot. Ships aren’t supposed to go as quickly as this one is, Phil knows, unless they are large enough that they only travel pre-approved courses.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Dead space</span>
  </em>
  <span> is not a pre-approved course.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s enough to make Phil curious, this ship moving like no other ship that Phil has ever seen, careening towards somewhere that no unprepared pilot should ever be.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When the person on it reaches out to Phil and is honest about how much he needs food, it catches Phil off guard.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re a-- one of those ‘vault’ people, right? The plant people, from Earth? Well, I didn’t bring enough rations, and if you have a farm, it would be great to share. I can-- I can do a lot of things. Whatever you want me to, really.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Rule one. Do not accept any offers.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil doesn’t even really need the help. He has his own routine, and it is enough that he could spend his entire life wandering through space without any real goal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why should I?” Phil asks as a courtesy, both to the person who he’s currently talking to and to himself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His conversation partner knows how to tell a story.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please,” he ends with. “I just-- I fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>need</span>
  </em>
  <span> this, you know? Out of options. I’m a fun roommate, I promise.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine. I’ve got your contact, now. Give me your diagnostics, and we can plan a meeting.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The line cuts quickly. Before it does, Phil can hear the beginnings of a shout.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Despite himself, he smiles.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>thank you so much for reading, i hope that you enjoyed! any kudos and comments are very appreciated!</p>
<p>next chapter is techno, tubbo, and tommy, along with hopefully a lot more actual plot :O</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much for reading! I hope that you enjoyed!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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